Psychology -- Reed-Sallee

You need 2 original research studies (sometimes called reports).

Original research is only published in scholarly journals. (See tab on identifying scholarly journals.) But not everything published in a scholarly journal is original research.

The definition of a research study is: A quantitative study that incorporates a formal design to test a hypothesis using validated measures in such a fashion as to be capable of replication by others or from which the results may be generalized to other settings.

Typically you can tell if an article will meet your needs just by reading the article title and the abstract (summary paragraph).

1. Does the article title use the word "study" as a noun? (As in "The long-term effects of short-term memory loss: a study.") Most won't make it this easy, but don't work harder than necessary. Tip: a "Prospective Study" is one that has not been performed (so it doesn't meet your needs).
2. Is the title lengthy and descriptive? A short title, like "Phantom Limb Pain", is unlikely to be a research study. Instead it will likely be an article summarizing current knowledge about the topic and citing state-of-the-art knowledge. Research studies typically have titles that describe exactly what the researchers did. For example: "Can Genetic Risk Information Enhance Motivation for Smoking Cessation? An Analogue Study"

Then check the abstract. Reading the abstract will probably be enough to clarify for you whether or not you have the right thing.

Can't find an abstract? That might be a sign that you don't have an article from a scholarly journal. Go to the end to check for a bibliography (list of references).

Read through the abstract and still aren't sure? Skim through the article and look for the following sections: Methods, Results, Discussion. Here are some examples of how they might look.

All of these things indicate that you have found what you are looking for!

You are really looking for research that takes the form of surveys, correlational studies, naturalistic observation, or controlled experiments. But you may as one (1) of your two (2) have any of the following types of research that appears in scholarly journals:

1. A pure literature review -- where the authors, for whatever purpose, report on the results of several other studies in detail.
2. A case study
3. A meta-analysis -- where researchers take data gathered by previous researchers and analyze it in new ways to produce new results.

Your other article must be an original research study of one of the 4 types noted in the 1st sentence.